Surrealism in the Dark, 2019

It begins in the dark – where marks are left to chance and mistakes decide how the image will appear. Edges burn with glowing light, liquid drips down the paper and reveals a face, water moves over the page and blurs what we see. In the light, colour swirls on these pages and reveals even more: a bright pink tone highlights glimpses of double-exposure, of an expression in those eyes that was almost lost, of tong-marks left by an accidental meeting of wet chemical and cold metal. In all these things, chance rules, and it is chance that leads to the next discovery, to the next view. Then, on the screen, chance prompts further exploration – digital marks respond to the marks made in the dark. One world, a darkroom of wet chemicals and paper, the other, a screen illuminated – it is in these two worlds that the image is merged, melded, twisted, deconstructed, reconstructed, re-imagined. And in these worlds, chance leaves all doors open for the image to exist in endless forms…